Earth Sciences

Yesterday, an important milestone was reached in the development of ESA’s GOCE (Gravity field and steady-state Ocean Circulation Explorer) mission, when a contract, worth €7.8 million, was signed between ESA and the Institute for Astronomical and Physical Geodesy (IAPG) from the Technical University of Munich.

The contract means that the scientific data resulting from the GOCE mission will be analysed by a consortium of 10 European universities and research institutes led by

U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and NASA scientists studying Mount St. Helens are using high-tech Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) technology to analyze changes in the surface elevation of the crater, which began deforming in late September 2004.

With data derived from airborne LIDAR, scientists can accurately map, often in exquisite detail, the dimensions of the uplift and create better models to forecast volcanic hazards. LIDAR shows, in the two weeks before Oct. 4, the new upl

Scientists in the department of Geology and Geophysics at Yale University have devised a method to precisely date the timing and temperature of a meteorite impact on Mars that led to ejection of a piece of the planet into space and its eventual impact on Earth.

Meteorites are the main source of mass exchange between planets and carry with them characteristic clues about the nature and history of the planets or planetesimals where they originated, the impacts that dislodged them, a

Remains of a dinosaur new to Russia have been found in the town of Blagoveshchensk and described by a Russian paleontologist. Previously, remains of the nearest relations of this pangolin – Kerberosaur – were found only in North America.

An unusual scull of a large dinosaur that lived in the Late Cretaceous (approximately 70 million years ago) was found in the territory of Blagoveshchensk by paleontologist Yuri Bolotsky, specialist of the Amir Comprehensive Scientific Research Ins

A team led by Jacques Laskar from the Institut de Mécanique Céleste et de Calcul des Ephémérides (IMCCE) and the Paris Observatory has released new computational results for the long-term evolution of the orbital and rotational motion of the Earth. Following Milankovitch’s theory of the paleoclimate that describes how major climatic changes on Earth are affected by astronomical events, these results have been employed to provide a new calibration of the sedimentary records over the 0 – 23.03

Glacier regression in the tropical Andes has accelerated considerably over the past 30 years. This change is cause for great concern, insofar as many regions of the Andes depend on the Cordillera’s glaciers for their water supply (2).

In 1991 scientists from the IRD research unit Great Ice (UR032) set up an observation network, jointly with their Bolivian, Peruvian and Ecuadorian partners. This system takes in a dozen glaciers along the Andes between the Equator and longitude 16